Now he looked contrite. “It’s…”
“It’s fine.”
I walked back into the reception area and spoke to Hegarty, asking him to find out the latest from the coroner at Alexandria Hospital. And if he hadn’t performed the autopsy to make sure he did it soon.
The sergeant was disappointed but accepted my instruction without complaint.
When they had left, I asked Rahman, “So where are the guns?”
“Geylang Village. According to Kim, they’re stored in a shop-house there.”
We jumped in a waiting black Austin 5 and were followed by two more, crammed with policemen. Our car just had a driver and the two of us in the rear.
“Tai Tai is dead,” I said.
“Yes. It is a great pity. You said you thought she could help us if only she came out of the coma.”
“What happened?”
“I do not know the detail but I understand they did not know she had died in the night until the orderlies came to prepare her for transportation in the morning.”
As we weaved through the streets I recognized them from when I’d chased the trishaw driver and met the white-eyed man.
I said, “There was a sentry outside her room?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So no one could have got in?”
“Her room was permanently guarded. Surely you don’t think she was murdered?” He sounded shocked at the suggestion but I couldn’t shake the idea.
I looked out of the window. We were now beyond the ghetto and in an area I didn’t know.
“Even if she was murdered—” Rahman said thoughtfully, “although I can’t see why—even if she was, hopefully it won’t matter now if we find the guns.” Then he pointed. “Here. This is the street. We’ll stop at the end and walk.”
Our driver pulled to the kerb and one of the following cars parked behind us. The second car continued up the road and stopped about eighty yards away.
As we stood on the pavement, surveying the row of shop-houses, I became acutely aware of how heavily armed the police squad was. Rahman had a holstered pistol but the other five men had rifles, two handed, at the ready.
Four policemen from the second car mirrored us until Rahman gave a signal. As his men responded by putting up a cordon at each end of the street, civilians rapidly melted away until we were the only ones outside.
The shops looked clean and well-presented but that belied the state of the buildings. Tiles were missing and most upper floors looked in need of paint, if not new window frames.
I suspected our target was equidistant between our two groups. It was correct. Rahman left one man by each cordon, sent two men to the rear, and posted another two outside the shop. That left me and the inspector and four policemen.
We entered a hardware store and immediately an elderly Japanese man—who I guessed was the shopkeeper—came at us with a stick. Rahman barked something at the man which made him hesitate. Then two of the officers grabbed him, forcing the old man to the floor.
At the rear I could see three Japanese women cowering. Rahman marched forwards and spoke to them, his tone commanding but placatory. The women bowed and the eldest, possibly the old man’s wife, but more likely his daughter, spoke. Rahman replied and then called over his shoulder.
“Let the old man up. He’s harmless.”
Once the man had been released, Rahman spoke to the woman again. She pointed at the ceiling and he explained, “The upstairs rooms are not safe but Chinese men have been there recently.”
I said, “Nothing to do with these people down here?”
“According to the woman.”
We went through the back of the shop and into a yard behind. The two policemen who Rahman had sent back here dropped their aim once they realized it was us coming through the door.
The inspector repositioned them and pointed to a staircase. There were the two of us and five of his men.
Rahman looked at me. “You don’t have a gun,” he said quietly. “For your safety, I’d like you to hang back. We’ll both wait until it’s clear.”
He kept one man at the foot of the stairs and sent the remaining group up the flight. What happened next shocked me.
The men charged to the top. The first man there front-kicked the door, ducked to one side and the other three opened fire.
“Stop!” I yelled. This was crazy and I remembered what Robshaw had told me about the raid in Chinatown, a couple of weeks before I arrived. The police went in shooting and ruined the MP’s operation to catch a guy called Webster.
The gunfire was over almost as soon as it started. One of the men shouted, “All clear!” and we raced up the stairs.
In the gloom, I could see the room was empty. There were no Chinese gangsters, just five policemen and me.
A stench of old cigarettes, piss and something rotten rose up and filled my nostrils.
One of the men pulled a makeshift curtain from a dirty window and I could see the room itself was virtually empty. The floor had dusty, bare wooden boards. A square table had four chairs and four beer bottles. More bottles were scattered around the room along with cigarette butts and newspaper detritus.
A bucket in the corner by the window explained the toilet smell. There was also a box with scraps of food. Maybe the remnants of many meals.
“What’s this?” One of the men held up a piece of paper.
It was something I’d seen before.
FIFTY-SEVEN
“Exactly the same,” Rahman said as he turned the flyer of a red paw print in a circle in his hands.
“Not exactly.” I pointed to the Chinese lettering. “This looks different.”
The inspector asked one of his men to translate.
“Attack the parade,” the man said.
Rahman looked at me but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. We may not have found any guns but we had more evidence of what would happen tomorrow.
I took the flyer and walked back to the stairs and the sunlight. Something bothered me. As I suspected, the image and writing were hand painted. Surely a flyer like this would be mass produced. If they weren’t then that would explain why Yipp and white-eyed Chen said they hadn’t seen it before. Because there were so few around.
Which raised the question: why make them?
“Captain!” Rahman called me back into the room.
He was looking up at a square outline in the ceiling. A hatch, most likely. He pointed to the floor and I could see scrape marks in the dust. The table and at least one chair had once been under the hatch.
The inspector signalled to the men and they dragged the table over. One man stepped onto a chair and then the table. He pushed the square area and it lifted. There was no hinge so he pushed up on one side to reveal a hole about two feet square.
The man gripped the edge and jumped so that he could see over the edge. When he shook his head, someone passed him a torch. He removed his jacket and jumped again, this time with so much spring that the table toppled over.
With a jerk and a wriggle he levered himself up and into the space above.
After the crash of the table, it fell silent except for our breathing and the scuffles over our heads.
Then the man cried out. “Sir!”
He reappeared in the hole, panting with excitement. “Sir, they are here!”
“Guns?” Rahman asked.
“Crates at least. Looks like they could be, sir.”
“Can you get one down?”
“Difficult. Easier with two.”
The table was repositioned and Rahman looked at me. “What do you think? Want to take a look?”
I didn’t waste a second. I was up on the table and handing the inspector my jacket.
This time, the men below held the table and I imitated the move of the policeman already up there. At least, I did my best, because I was bigger and broader and had to lever one arm at a time before pushing up and through.
The roof was only a few feet above us so I n
eeded to crouch. Combined with dodgy looking rafters it made progress awkward. I followed the policeman’s torch and was soon looking at a pile of wooden boxes. They had His Majesty’s crest and Property of The British Army stamped on the lid and were padlocked. I knew these crates. I’d seen hundreds of them. Inside would be up to twenty rifles.
The policeman shone his torch around and we counted six boxes. Maybe one hundred and twenty rifles.
I could have waited but the wood looked old so I lay on my back and stamped my heel down on the nearest crate.
The wood splintered and we tore the lid away. The first thing we saw was oil cloth. Long items were wrapped in it. It’s how rifles used to be stored. So there was no surprise when I pulled one out and removed the cloth. In the torch light I read M1 Garand on the stock.
“It’s them by God!” I shouted. “It’s them.”
I passed the rifle down for Rahman to see and then we manoeuvred the box to the hatch and fed it down to waiting hands. Within minutes, we had all six boxes down and open.
As I expected, there were one hundred and twenty rifles.
Rahman shook his head. “So, if three hundred were traded by Cooke, then we have less than half and all of them are missing the firing pins. I suppose that could be easily rectified?”
I was holding one of the rifles and took it outside for a better view. I looked down the barrel and then handed the gun to Rahman.
“That’s not what bothers me,” I said as the inspector also looked at the barrel. “It might not be by much, but each of these has been damaged. Deliberately so, in my estimation. These guns have been rendered useless.”
We turned and looked back at the boxes and rifles we had laid out on the shop-house floor.
“Why would somebody buy damaged rifles?” I pondered.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Although Rahman didn’t have an answer to that, he said, “Perhaps the other one hundred and eighty weren’t damaged.”
We were back in the Austin 5 and, under Rahman’s instructions, heading for the fort.
“We should inform the general,” he said.
“We’ve found guns but they can’t be used in an attack.”
“Does that matter?”
“What do you mean?”
He placed his hands as though in prayer. “What do you want the general to do?”
“Follow the security plan,” I said. “I want him in the Battle Box.”
“And he said that if you found the guns then that’s what he would do.” He looked at me shrewdly. “Does it matter that you know the guns we found were useless?”
I sat in silence for a while, watching the streets and thinking about all the questions I still had. Did it matter? Probably not.
“But we have another whole day,” I said eventually. “Another day gives us time to find the rest of the guns.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then I’ll tell the general we’ve found them.”
That made Rahman laugh and I guess he was right. In effect the outcome was the same.
“In that case, back to the station,” he said leaning forward so our driver could hear.
When he sat back, I said, “I didn’t know you could speak Japanese.”
He studied me for a second and then the realization must have hit him. “Ah, in the shop.”
“Yes. You spoke to the old lady.”
He nodded. “I know a few words.”
To my inexperienced ear I thought he sounded more proficient than that, but I said nothing. I was thinking. I replayed things in my head.
“Penny for them?” he said snapping my attention back into the car. It reminded me of Hegarty and his need to tell me the etymology of phrases.
“Just thinking,” I said but didn’t expand on it. Instead I said, “Do you know The Red Lion pub?”
“It’s not a place I would patronize, but yes I know it.”
“It’s just a little ironic. The Red Lion is so British, and one of the most common names for pubs. I was once told the reason is that the army used pubs to recruit soldiers back in the seventeen hundreds, and chose pubs as recruitment centres. So that people knew, they were called The Red Lion.”
“Is that true?”
“I have no idea but the irony is we are chasing a red lion,” I said referring to the image on the flyer. “Only this one represents the enemy.”
We agreed that Rahman would hold onto the guns, just in case we didn’t find the others. If the general knew they were useless, he’d never agree to my plan.
I suspected it was too early for what I wanted but I went for a walk around Chinatown. I found Happy Palace, the bar where the lady-boy called Angel had tried to pick up a soldier. She wasn’t there and I didn’t find her in any of the other drinking haunts.
However the walk cleared my head and I decided I would visit Fort Canning after all although I wanted to speak to Colonel Atkinson rather than the general. I also wanted to avoid telling him about the guns we’d found, if at all possible.
Atkinson was in the garden looking out to sea when I walked across the courtyard.
“Good to see you,” he called, and waved.
When I joined him, he said, “I hear you came mob handed to see the general yesterday.”
“Yes, it was a mistake. I should have come alone but there’s so much division here, I thought—”
“You thought to involve others.” He smiled reassuringly and I suspect he had sympathy for my role and what I was supposed to do. However, when he continued he said, “Politics is a funny old game. One may try to do the right thing but it isn’t always the prudent course.”
“Will the army and police ever find a balance?”
“Oh it’s not that, Ash. It’s the government not the police. One day, and maybe not far off, this will not be a Crown Colony. This will not be a British controlled government.”
“And where does that leave the army?”
“Not here, I’m afraid. That’s the best I can do with my crystal ball. But you didn’t come here to talk about sand running through the hour glass.”
“No, I wanted to ask you a question, if you don’t mind. I also wanted to think about the security here.”
He began to walk and as I stayed in step, he asked, “What would you like to know?”
“You remember the names of the people involved and the battalions?”
“Of course. They are burned in my memory. Percival was the commander and we had thirty-eight infantry battalions and three machine-gun battalions.”
I said, “What happened to the Indian 4th on day one?”
“Day one? You mean the 44th. There wasn’t a 4th. It was the 44th Indian and Taylor’s Australian battalions that met the first wave of attacks. On the second day Percival formed the defensive line, when it was already too late. That’s when I got involved. And you know the rest.” He went quiet and I let him walk in silence lost in his own thoughts.
After we’d done a loop around the garden, I asked, “Did you ever come across a Captain Keith?”
“That’s not a name I know. From the time of the war?”
“That’s what I thought.”
He shook his head, “If you gave me a couple of days I could probably list all the officers here at the time. But I can tell you now that no one was called Keith.”
He said he needed to get back to work and invited me inside. But I declined. Instead I headed for the Battle Box. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind a plan was forming. It wasn’t complete yet but I needed to make sure I knew the layout of the bunker. I also needed to be sure my key worked.
I stood in front of the solid iron door and pulled the four inch key from my jacket pocket. It looked dusty so I gave it a clean. There was something between the teeth and I rubbed the sticky substance away before trying it in the lock. It worked just fine, clicking the tumbler like it had just been oiled. Which, knowing the army, it probably had.
I flicked on a light switch that was one of those sticks with
a bobble on the end: never updated from when it had been constructed I guessed.
The room was unchanged from the first day I’d been here, the large table with a relief map of South East Asia, dominating the centre. The rest cold and sparse, not helped by the grey-orange lighting.
If this were as sumptuous as the main building—and I imagined the library—I suspected the general wouldn’t have needed so much persuasion to come here. As it was, even I would have objected.
I turned off the light, clunked the metal door closed and removed the key.
My watch said it was an hour to nightfall. So I strolled back to the area around Happy Palace, found something to eat and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. When Angel spotted me, she thought about running but then she looked down at her high heels and shrugged.
“I’ve not done anything,” she said as soon as I gripped her forearm and steered her over to a table.
“I didn’t say you had,” I said.
“Then what?”
“I have a proposition for you.”
She looked at me long and hard possibly wondering if I meant a sexual proposition and then realizing it was something else.
“How would you like to make some money?” I said, needing no answer. “I have something I want you to do for me.”
After I’d explained it, she negotiated on the price, which I’d expected. Then she asked “When?”
“Soon. I want you to go to The Red Lion at this time each evening. When you see a black ribbon hanging from a lantern outside, then that’s your signal.”
“I can’t keep—”
I doubled the price, as I’d expected to. For me this was still good value. For her, it cost virtually nothing. Then I added: “It’s just for a maximum of two days.”
“And the taxi?”
“Of course I’ll pay for the taxi—both ways.”
There was a telephone message waiting for me at the hotel. It was from Hegarty.
Itsaid:Tai Tai was murdered.
FIFTY-NINE
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